About

Bean 3D Printer: The Ultimate Consumer SLA 3D Printer

$709,790

pledged of $50,000 goal

1,591

backers

Along with the advancement of display technologies, resin printers now can be made with a cost close to FDM printers while maintaining a print quality much better than FDM printers. Bean is developed to meet consumers' demand for a high performance, reliable, low-cost 3D printer.

With consumers in mind, we determined that the new printer must be compact and stylish. The green cover was designed to make it easier to be blended into an everyday environment. In line with the theme "green," the Bean's light source is made from LEDs, resulting in a greener energy consumption and longer lifetime. The two edges were rounded off to reflect the shape of a bean. In the end, we dubbed the printer the "Bean" to reflect the compactness and greenish qualities of the printer. (Internally, we nicknamed it Green Bean!) To bring the cost down, we combine our PSP technology with an ultra-high resolution LCD panel. With this came the birth of Kudo3D's Bean 3D printer.

The Bean is stylish. It is pre-calibrated before shipping and comes with a spring loaded self-leveling build platform.

The Bean 3D printer is a fully fledged, compact desktop SLA 3D printer. With dimensions of 8 in x 8 in x 16 in (20 cm x 20 cm x 40 cm) and a weight of only 15 pounds (6.67 Kg), the Bean fits well in any office, studio and workshop environment.

Printing at 50 micron XY resolution (capable of 10 microns Z layer thickness), the printouts of Bean has an amazing high resolution comparable to DLP 3D printers. Here again on Kickstarter, we print the same Fisherman Captain model designed by Russ Charles to illustrate the details that Bean can achieve. This model is printed at a layer thickness of 35 microns.

The Bean 3D printer has a uniform maximum build area of 2.7 in x 4.7 in (12.1 cm x 6.8 cm) and a build height of 5.9 in (15 cm). We printed 39 rings with a layer thickness of 25 microns on one platform to illustrate the uniformity. The diameter of a prong in the digital model is 0.0567 in (1.44 mm). The diameter of the printed prongs around the four corners is about 0.0563 in (1.43 mm). The diameter of the printed prongs in the center is around 0.05866 in (1.49 mm). Printout uniformity is greater than 95% across the platform. At a layer thickness of 50 microns, the printing speed ranges from 1 to 2 cm per hour.

The surfaces of printed models are very smooth.

The Bean 3D printer is a LCD based SLA 3D printer. Instead of using laser or DLP to generate patterns, the Bean has a high resolution 2K LCD panel coupled with a purple 405nm LED lamp to project slices of a 3D model onto the floor of resin container. The average power consumption of the Bean is only 50W which is one of the lowest.

The resin container is a modified version of the PSP (passive self-peeling) resin container on Titan 2 DLP-SLA printer. Similar to the original PSP, this new version is called the PSP-D. Only Teflon film needs to be replaced. The lifetime of the film depends on the size of the printed model. In general, it should last 20 to 50 prints. The peeling starts from one side of the container to reduce the separation force. As a result, the printing is more reliable, the details are preserved and larger models can be printed.

Bean currently uses a tool chain of software and is controlled by web browser. We will start developing an integrated version after Kickstarter campaign.

Bean can be controlled and monitored by mobile devices

SLA 3D printers use liquid resins to create the prints. This liquid resin solidifies once a light pattern is shined upon it. Our 3DSR high resolution resins have been thoroughly formulated for different applications, ensuring users with only the best result. We are currently evaluating castable resins for Bean and will release a castable resin before shipping.

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For each printer, the starter kit includes:

We hope that this affordable printer will get into many people's life and accelerate new innovations and designs that we have not seen before. However, we cannot do it alone. We need your support to make Bean into a successful product.

THANK YOU!

Risks and challenges

The risk of this project is much lower compared with other new 3D printer projects. This is our second project on Kickstarter, and we have 3 years of experience producing our Titan 1 and Titan 2 printers. Kudo3D Inc. was founded with a goal to be one of the top 3D printer companies. Our Titan printers have been proven to be very successful and are used by many prestigious institution and companies. We are financially disciplined and secured. We believe building credits is the most important thing to make a business sustainable in the long run. Given this, we only promise what we can achieve. Despite this, there are always some risks with any projects.

1) Procurement risk: This is mainly caused by the suppliers' delay. To minimize the risk, we always have backup suppliers.
2) Design risk: This risk is relatively low because most of the Bean design was inspired by our Titan 2 printer.
3) Resin risk: In addition to the resins showcased during the Kickstarter campaign, more resins for different applications will be developed before shipment. Third party resin suppliers will release compatible resins as well.
4) Shipping risk: This is mainly caused by the different countries' customs and may result in a delay.